


Hanging

by petreparkour



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Comedian Richie Tozier, Deadlights (IT), Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Homophobia, Hurt Richie Tozier, IT Chapter Two Fix-It, IT Chapter Two Spoilers, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Internalized Homophobia, Language, M/M, Movie: IT Chapter Two (2019), PLEASE NOTE there is a lynching of a gay boy described in not graphic detail, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sad Richie Tozier, ish, this is angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 17:03:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21201095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petreparkour/pseuds/petreparkour
Summary: In hindsight, Richie realized that it all came back to the deadlights.If you start when he was thirteen years old, coke-bottle glasses and hate in his bones, yelling at Bill (his best friend, how had he forgotten, hisbest friend),swinging a baseball bat at a dumb clown, it ends with Beverly trapped in the deadlights, limp in the air.Start when he was fourteen, taking a knife to a bridge and carving something that could never happen, could never be true, because it was motherfucking 1984 and God forbid anything that wasn’t white, conservative, and straight.Seventeen, smoking weed in the bleachers at school and trying to forget the hate that curdled in his lungs, because he was wrong and hehated it.





	Hanging

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this on an angst bender as a reaction for it chapter two. i originally only planned to share this with my friend but she implored me to share it.... so i did!
> 
> also, for people who were hoping for chapter 3 of try, try again, that's in the works!
> 
> hope you guys enjoy! ALSO: THE LOWERCASE IS INTENTIONAL.
> 
> **PLEASE READ TAGS.**

In hindsight, Richie realized that it all came back to the deadlights.

If you start when he was thirteen years old, coke-bottle glasses and hate in his bones, yelling at Bill (his best friend, how had he forgotten, his best _ friend)_, swinging a baseball bat at a dumb clown, it ends with Beverly trapped in the deadlights, limp in the air.

Start when he was fourteen, taking a knife to a bridge and carving something that could never happen, could never be true, because it was motherfucking 1984 and God forbid anything that wasn’t white, conservative, and straight.

Seventeen, smoking weed in the bleachers at school and trying to forget the hate that curdled in his lungs, because he was wrong and he hated it. 

Eight, realizing that none of his classmates walked to school by themselves like he did, that mothers and fathers usually didn’t stay in bed until 11am, and feeling that first tinge of hate whispering in his blood.

Richie _ hated. _ He _ hated _the way that he loved people.

dead

he’s thirteen, watching Beverly dangle from nothing, ten feet in the air, hanging in the deadlights—

no, rewind, ten, staring frozen at a middle schooler who had called himself _ gay _ the day before, hanging from a tree—

no, farther, sixteen, hearing whispers of _ fairy _ and _ fag _ as he passed in the hall, thinking of the middle schooler hanging—

no, rewind, back to thirteen, staring at a missing poster of his face _ of his face _OF HIS FACE richie tozier MISSING July 4 13 Years Old City of Derry MISSING, missing like the middle schooler who he had never known the name of hanging from a TREE—

farther, he’s forty, the fucking clown (it was back, it was back Stan was GONE) dangling, hanging from the balloons, crooning about _ dirty little secrets _ and RICHIE WAS GOING TO HANG TOO, DIRTY BOY—

too far, too far, rewind, stuck tape, he’s forty, yelling at the fucking clown, and the deadlights catch him he’s hanging in the air and he’s back, in the loop.

lights

Eddie shaking him, trying to rouse him, and he said I THINK I GOT IT and Richie thought NO and then there was a SPIKE through his CHEST and he WASN’T BREATHING

They didn’t let him stay with Eddie. They could have saved him and they LEFT HIM.

Richie got stuck on this moment a lot. This was the moment when the signal jammed, got lost, the tape got stuck, and he had to rewind it just to make sense of it all. How could that have happened like that? It didn’t make sense, in his head. How could it? How could he be—?

He’s thirteen, yelling at Bill and swinging a baseball bat, but there’s something else, there’s something—

Maybe it’s the look on Bowers’s cousin’s face, the way he had smiled at Richie and then scowled once Henry showed up and Richie saw himself hanging from a tree with _ Bowers _ printed on his stomach like Ben, HANGING—

No, not that, not that, was it the way Stan screamed when It had gotten him alone, pinned him by the face, _ you brought me into Neibolt, you’re not my friends, YOU’RE NOT MY FRIENDS? _ Richie didn’t think so, because Beverly had been hanging in the air, limp, eyes open, staring at nothing—

No, not that either, maybe it was the look on Eddie’s face as he screamed at Richie _ don’t you fucking DARE _ and he snapped his arm back to place and his mother came and said they were dangerous, dirty, and Richie thought for a moment that she KNEW HOW COULD SHE KNOW he was going to HANG she was going to tell everyone he was DIRTY—

No, couldn’t be that, maybe when he was clutching a missing poster of himself and shaking, feeling bile rise in his throat because he was MISSING and HANGING—

Maybe smoking with Bev on the roof of his house, both of them ignoring the screaming of his parents from downstairs, idly wondering what the future would bring for them, what could possibly be more interesting than killing a fucking demon clown and watching dozens of dead children hang in the sky—

Bev left, and made him leave Eddie in the pit under Neibolt and Eddie was was was was was

Stuck tape, back up, rewind. It was the deadlights, every time. 

Fifteen, he’s fifteen and down with the flu and his voice is gone and Eddie comes over with a surgical mask and hot soup, and Richie can’t talk and Eddie can’t get too close and Richie wants to _ scream. _ Fifteen, that night, couldn’t sleep seeing Beverly hang there and Pennywise attached to Stan’s face and It was RIGHT THERE he was DIRTY—

Forty forty forty he’s forty and he’s calling It a _ sloppy bitch _ and It shoves him into the deadlights and he HANGS.

I THINK I GOT IT, Eddie says. NO, Richie thinks, and it happens AGAIN.

And Richie gets lost again. Some part of the cassette tape is missing, some crucial piece: the chorus of the anthem, the thesis of the essay, the keystone of the archway, something is missing and he needs to find out what, what has happened?

He’s forty, and sitting in the quarry where they had played twenty-seven years ago (twenty-seven, HA, he hadn’t thought he’d make it to twenty years old) and he’s crying his eyes out because they’re talking about Eddie like he’s been gone for ages and his BLOOD is still on Richie’s GLASSES and he drops them because his hands are shaking so badly. 

He’s forty-one, at his first comedy show since The Incident, standing at the mic with his own jokes written out, and instead he accidentally tells them a story from when he and Eddie were kids involving a snake, a coyote trap, and pepper spray. Bev calls him after to say that she’d laughed so hard she’d cried, and then she had just cried. Richie hadn’t even realized that he’d told the story until he saw the audience laughing and he realized that he’d said something. He watched the rerun, afterwards, and when he saw how hard the audience laughed he threw up into the sink. 

DEAD, he wanted to scream at them. HE’S DEAD AND IT’S MY FAULT HE SAVED ME AND HE’S DEAD.

He just kept making them laugh. All the Losers called him once in a while to catch up, tell him that they’d watched his show and he was _ so much funnier now, I’m glad you’re doing your own stuff _ and Richie barely restrained himself from SCREAMING AT THEM because Eddie was DEAD and they were all NORMAL—

Netflix sent him an offer for a third special and said that they thought he was much funnier now, but probably more polite but that was all that Richie could read, but he said yes because why the HELL not? Everything already went to hell! He could do whatever he want! Say whatever he wanted!

He told them his STORY of PENNYWISE THE DANCING CLOWN who ATE CHILDREN in the SEWERS of his hometown and killed two of his FRIENDS and they LAUGHED and Netflix called it EMMY-WORTHY and Richie should do his own SHOW he got movie offers and talk show interviews and Richie wanted to laugh.

DEAD

He thought of January embers and Bev and Ben, happy together, in Seattle, it only took twenty-seven years, a demonic clown, and two dead friends to solidify their love! And he wondered wondered wondered what it would have been like with Eddie Eddie Eddie Eddie

Stuck tape, rewind, Richie went to UCLA and Eddie went to NYU and they promised to call and it stopped after a MONTH why had Richie STOPPED.

High school reunions will be a blast, Richie writes to the Losers via group messages. We should go, it’s in like a week, not too late to RSVP, we’ll see what Greta Keene is up to, Richie says. Hell yes, Bev says. Seriously, Bill writes, fine. I hate you guys, says Mike. Hell yes, writes Ben, and Ben always was Richie’s favorite, except NOT REALLY BECAUSE EDDIE AND STAN AREN’T THERE TO GO TOO.

Richie was a stuck tape, a broken radio. He had heard about the five stages of grief, but Richie was stuck on the first, because how could this have happened, he saw it in the deadlights and happened ANYWAY, why had it happened like this, HOW. 

Stan was gone. Eddie was gone. Why was Richie stuck in the middle?

LIGHTS

Bill published a new book with a bittersweet ending—the best Richie had seen so far. Bev got a divorce and started a new fashion line from scratch. Ben had a wonderful wedding to his childhood sweetheart with hair of winter fire. Mike bought a bus ticket for a trip from California to New York and resolved to never return to Derry. Stan ____. Eddie ____. Richie told joke after joke after joke and won award after award after award and people laughed and laughed and laughed. 

Richie didn’t know what was going to happen, anymore. He went to Stan’s and Eddie’s funerals, the latter of which featuring a sobbing woman who bore an alarming resemblance to Mrs. Kaspbrak, and Richie went and looked at the tree that the middle schooler had hung from so long ago. He sat there for an hour under that tree and tried to see if the scar from the rope was still there. 

He had HUNG and so had RICHIE yet EDDIE was DEAD—

and Richie wakes up to the sensation of lips on his. 

The cave breaks dark and dank above him, and despite the fact that his glasses are caked with dust and half-shattered, he can still make out Eddie’s figure above him. 

“Richie,” Eddie is saying, shaking him, and Richie blinks. Eddie smiles at him. “Hey, I think I got it.”

I THINK I GOT IT, Eddie says. NO, Richie thinks. 

He surges up despite the weakness making his whole body feel like one giant bruise, plants both hands firmly against Eddie’s chest, and pushes them out of the way. 

The spike catches his arm as he rolls to the side, and a cry of pain rips itself out of Richie’s throat as Its blade tears a deep gash from his wrist all the way to his shoulder. And not through Eddie’s midsection. 

It snarls and reaches for him again, and Bill screams, “Richie, Eddie, _ move _!”

Richie’s limbs are jelly, and he can feel his ability to think draining as quickly as the blood from his arm. His feet scrabble on the dirt ground, but he can’t gain enough traction to force himself upright. 

Eddie hauls him up by his good arm, yells, “Come on!” in his ear, and pulls him along to an outcropping in the cave. 

Richie is as discombobulated as he’s ever been in his entire life: he stumbles over his own feet, over Eddie’s, and cradles his arm to his chest. _ Is this even real, _ he wants to ask. _ Is this real, because I just watched Eddie’s lifeblood spill all over me, yet he’s pulling me around like he’s still alive. Is this real or am I still HANGING and Eddie is still DEAD. _

It isn’t thrashing around anymore, and it takes Richie a moment to realize way. Eddie has ripped off his sweater and is in the process of trying to cover the entirety of the open wound in Richie’s arm. Bill and Bev are hovering over him, the former shaking his shoulders and the latter repeating insistently, “Richie, breathe, _ breathe.” _

Richie, rather detachedly, notices that he hasn’t actually been breathing, and that he and Eddie appear to have switched roles. He opens his mouth to tell Eddie so, but what comes out is a weak and croaky, “you’re alive.”

Eddie quirks a brow at him and ties off his sweater at Richie’s bicep. “Obviously, moron.”

Richie stretches out trembling fingers to touch Eddie’s face, and repeats dumbly, “You’re alive.”

They’re all staring at him now, even with Pennywise thumping around outside and crooning insults that Richie can’t hear over the ringing in his ears. 

Richie sees understanding dawn on Bev’s face before anyone else’s, but Richie has been in this cave before, and it was Eddie propped where he was sitting, with blood spilling over his lips.

“Richie,” Bev says gently, wiping the blood off of her hands before taking his, “what did you see?”

And Richie begins to cry. 

Bev squeezes his hands, and Eddie reaches for him and he’s warm and breathing and he’s alive, but his could this be happening because he had bled out in Richie’s arms was he still HANGING—

“It’s wasn’t real, Richie,” Bev placates him desperately. “Whatever you saw, _ it wasn’t real.” _

“No,” Richie mutters, because he had to be HANGING still because Eddie was _ alive. _

“All right, Richie?” Bill says softly, but both he and Mike are glancing at the entryway, steadily crumbling under the weight of Pennywise’s spike-legs. 

I MADE IT SMALL, Eddie had muttered through the blood clogging his throat. 

“I made it small,” Richie repeats numbly. Eddie jolts and stares at him. 

“What?” Bev asks. “Richie, you’re not making sense.”

“You made it small,” he corrected; it probably wasn’t the best idea to be quoting Eddie’s last words right in front of him. “The leper, you almost killed it. You weren’t scared. It was… small.”

“Well, It didn’t like it when you called It a sloppy bitch,” remarks Ben, who for whatever fucking reason is covered head to toe in dirt. Come to think of it, Bev is entirely covered in blood and Bill is soaking wet. 

Had Richie called It a sloppy bitch? He wasn’t really sure: he had just lived about six months in sixty seconds, he couldn’t remember exactly what annoying thing he had screamed at Pennywise. 

Bill tugs him to his feet by his good arm, but Eddie reaches for it and holds it tight. 

When they emerge from the crevice together, It laughs at them. “I am the destroyer of worlds,” It growls, and reaches towards Richie. 

“Not to us you’re not,” Mike says, and yes, Richie knows this. It shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and Richie bleeds and bleeds and bleeds and thinks of those children hanging in the lights, of Bev, of him, HANGING—

Neibolt crumbles around them, and Eddie pulls Richie out of it, clutching his hand. 

They probably look like crazy people walking through the outskirts of town towards the quarry, what with both Bev and Richie covered in blood, Ben coated in a thick layer of dirt, and Bill looking like a half-drowned puppy. But they somehow manage to make it there without being arrested, and Bev, just like that time twenty-seven years ago, jumps first. 

Richie doesn’t, because even though he isn’t as ridiculously health-conscious as Eddie, even he wouldn’t go into dirty water with an open wound like his. He climbs down onto the bank, though, and dangles his feet in the water while the rest of the Losers splash around. 

“We’re all going to get a disease,” Eddie complains. “Like s—”

“Yeah, yeah, strepalocau-whatever,” Bev laughs, and Richie is hit with a wave of vertigo so strong that he almost falls into the water. He sways and tries to balance himself with his bad arm, which promptly buckles beneath him. He ends up sprawled awkwardly on his back, his arm held close to his body and aching something fierce. 

“Richie, are you alright?” Eddie calls frantically, schlepping towards him. Richie tried to sit up, but the world is spinning so badly that he barely knows up from down. Suddenly, Eddie is right there, cupping his face and gently guiding him upright. Eddie pulls his glasses off, sending the world into a multicolored blur centered by a beige blur, which, surprisingly, makes the dizziness better instead of worse. 

“Fine,” Richie manages. “Just blind now, apparently.”

“That’s an improvement,” Eddie says dryly, and Richie realizes his hands are shaking. 

His glasses are re-perched on his nose, much cleaner although still half-shattered. Richie attempts to catch Eddie’s hand, but misses. Eddie takes pity on him and grasps both of his wrists. 

“You know,” Richie says lowly, “Just because I forgot some shit doesn’t mean that I forgot how Ben woke Bev up when we were kids.”

Eddie’s face goes red as he chokes on his own saliva. “What did you say?”

Richie reflects for a moment: an hour ago, he had been living a transparent life in a world where Eddie had choked on his own blood trying to save Richie. He had been caught in the deadlights for so long and yet so short, hanging—

And yet now he was here, firmly on the ground with Eddie alive and breathing in front of him. 

“You goddamn prude,” Richie tells him, and kisses him. 

**Author's Note:**

> i love richie tozier! also i feel that anyone who made it to the end should be grateful that this fic has an alternate ending with quite an abrupt stop. i'll let you imagine what it is, but be grateful i decided on a happy one instead.
> 
> please leave comments and kudos if you liked!!! i love hearing from people!


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